Abstract

World has shown a spectacular increase in operation in recent years. A recent article (Anon., 1992) makes the following observations on the world gill net fishing: "The drifl: gill net fleet of the world act as curtains of death, land huge quantities of non-targeted species, prevent the salmon from reaching their native spawning sites, and also entangle, mutilate and drown thousands of marine mammals. The situation is alarming that more than 1,000 fishing vessels operate large sized nets hanging as much as 11 metres deep and spanning about 50 km, the combined length of the fleet's nets operating in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans amounting to about 50,000 km, more than the distance around the earth".